27th August 2004 Archive

The man behind Orbitz, Alex Zoghlin, says he's signed seven new airlines for his latest attempt to buck the airline ticketing business. His new company, G2 Switchworks has yet to launch the TrueConnect website, but has already indicated that it's taking Sabre, Worldspan and his former company Orbitz head on.

The SCO Group's stock hit its lowest point since the start of its anti-Linux campaign after settling a truce with one of its major investors. SCO has completed an agreement with BayStar Capital that ends an acrimonious dispute between the companies. Marin County-based BayStar invested $20m in SCO last October, but became dismayed by executives public statements and the company's strategy. Not that it lost faith in SCO's plan to extract IP royalties from Linux companies; quite the opposite: BayStar believed that SCO should drop its residual UNIX™ business and concentrate on licensing.

A Massachusetts businessman allegedly paid members of the computer underground to launch organized, crippling distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against three of his competitors, in what federal officials are calling the first criminal case to arise from a DDoS-for-hire scheme.

I've spent a significant amount of time in New Delhi - which was, until a few years ago, one of the most polluted cities on the planet - and I've seen the effects of all those toxic fumes. A low cloud of fog lines the narrow streets at night, and the pollution seeps in through the windows while most people are fast asleep, breathing it in.

Summer used to be the time of year when business slowed down from its usual frenetic pace and a degree of calm settled over organisations. This year has been somewhat different and a few days ago Cisco, one of the most widely recognised IT suppliers, agreed to splash out some $200m to acquire P-Cube.

Fraud is now considered to be as big a threat as burglary, however many employers are failing to take the most basic precautions. Research carried out by financial advisers MacIntyre Hudson, shows that 38 per cent of employers questioned pointed to fraud as the single biggest threat to their business.

Sprint has agreed to deliver video to its phones using Apple's QuickTime video technology. Sprint's PCS Vision Multimedia Services will deliver clips, including 'Sprint TV', to the Samsung MM-A700 handset. It's a minor announcement in the larger industry context, but a major deal for Apple, which can boast of its first carrier customer. So far, Real Networks has made most of the running in the mobile space, delivering news and sports clips for AT&T's new EDGE network through the Nokia 6620. The Real Player comes standard with Nokia's own Series 60 smartphones.

Siemens has issued a warning about potential ear damage caused by its 65 series phones. If the battery is exhausted during a phone call, the handset shuts down, but before clapping out altogether, it plays a tune. Rather loudly. That's more polite than screaming "I'm spent!" in German into your ear, but the problem is serious. The handset plays the shutdown melody so loudly that the user's eardrum may be damaged, says Siemens.